Hello,
I am new to linux and had a generla question about linux and the kernel. I have been playing around with linux and I am finaly trying to get all of my hardware working with Slack 10. I can't post actuall output because I have gone and F**ked it all up. I have an ATI radeon that seems to me from doing a lot of reading that I need to recompile the kernel anyway. I just did, and I might have "unloaded" too much out of the kernel and now nothing works. The machine boots but no drivers are loaded. I tried to load my nic drivers, which I have gotten to work before, but now it come up with a lot of errors saying thet there are unresolved symbols in the driver files located in /lib/modules. I need help understanding how the kernel and the modules go together. I think Modules are just temp drivers, so my guess would be that you need to compile the drivers that you most commonly use into the kernel, how? Any help that you could give would be greatly appreciated. If I can get my nic driver working I could post actual data. Sorry if this is not information. Thanks.

You are doing the right thing because the only way to learn is to do it.Don't get discouraged it gets better.
I use menuconfig so for the filesystem your chipset your drives select "*" which means It is compiled directly
into the kernel.I compile my sound card and ethernet card as modules "m" which means they will be loaded.
I use modules for everything I don't need right away.

Modules are simply sections of kernel code that can be load and unloaded as needed. If you are getting unresolved symbols then you have some problems with how your compiling modules. What I recommend is you do a make clean followed by a make && make modules_install. Put your bzImage file into place and update the bootloader config as needed. Then reboot and try and load the module in again. If there are unresolved symbols that usually should stop the module form building in the first place.

Thanks for the encouragement. I make a scrip to compile the kernel for me, would it be wise to change only a couple of things at a time, since I am not sure what they all are, when I recompile? Also, the .conf file in the kernel source dir, can I back that up. I have hear both good an bad about doing that. Thanks.

One mor things that I want to know...When I get all of this working, is there a way to back up the kernel to say, a cd, so that I don't have to play hit and miss next time? is it just the bzImage file, that seems too small Thanks again.

You should save your .config file, that has all the settings. Then, if you need to do it again you just run menuconfig and use the "install an alternative" option. (wording is not accurate, but near enough)